Masterworks Goes “On the Town” With Roslyn Kind’s RCA Albums, Bernstein Musical’s London Cast

Masterworks Broadway has announced the balance of its summer slate of CD-Rs/DD reissues from the Sony Music archives with both releases making their debut in the digital domain.  Next week, the label will reissue for the very first time both RCA albums by vocalist and cabaret star Roslyn Kind – not only a talented artist in her own right but also the half-sister of one Barbra Streisand.  Then, on August 19, Masterworks will bring to CD-R and DD the original 1963 London Cast Recording of Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green’s On the Town, just in time for its Broadway revival this fall.

Masterworks describes the unusual circumstances behind Roslyn Kind’s 1968 debut album Give Me You: “On a late spring morning in 1968, seventeen-year-old Roslyn Kind graduated from high school in Brooklyn and immediately began a new job later the same day.  ‘I graduated to ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ in the morning,’ she recalls, ‘and that evening I was in RCA Studio B, down around 23rd Street in Manhattan, making my first recording.’  The young singer remained at RCA for two albums and a handful of singles, and now both of those albums will be available once more.

Give Me You, primarily helmed by composer and arranger Lee Holdridge, featured Kind wrapping her expressive, big pipes around an array of contemporary songs beginning with the title track by the Broadway team of Larry Grossman and Hal Hackady (Play It Again, Sam, Minnie’s Boys, Goodtime Charley) and continuing with material from Jimmy Webb (the Bacharach-esque “If You Must Leave My Life”), John Lennon and Paul McCartney (“The Fool on the Hill”), future Holdridge collaborator Neil Diamond (“A Modern-Day Version of Love”), Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (“The Shape of Things to Come”) and Holdridge himself (“Who Am I?”).

Following this auspicious debut, Kind returned to RCA’s studios for 1969’s This is Roslyn Kind.  She returned to the Mann and Weil songbook with “Make Your Own Kind of Music” (which Barbra Streisand would later perform) and also surveyed tunes by the likes of The Association’s Larry Ramos (“It’s Gotta Be Real”) and Harry Nilsson (“I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City”).  Roslyn remained on RCA for a 1970 single with “Foresight” from the musical Gantry backed with Grossman and Hackady’s “Rich Is” from Minnie’s Boys, and eventually moved on to Streisand’s label, Columbia, where she recorded songs by Paul Williams and Peter Allen, among others.  She’s appeared on Saturday Night Live and The Nanny, headlined at The Plaza’s Persian Room, and returned in 1994 with another full-length LP.  Today, Kind is a draw in concert, most recently performing a hot-ticket engagement at New York’s 54 Below nightspot.

Give Me You/This is Roslyn Kind will be released exclusively for purchase via MasterworksBroadway.com on July 22 as MOD CD-Rs, as well as for digital download.  The CD-Rs will be available through Arkiv Music on August 19, plus streaming and downloads via digital service providers the same day. After the jump: details on On the Town, plus full track listings for both titles and more!

Relight Their Fire: BBR Compiles Hits, Rarities For Loleatta Holloway, Skyy and Evelyn “Champagne” King

It’s no secret that Big Break Records, an imprint of Cherry Red Group, has mastered the art of the reissue when it comes to vintage R&B, soul and disco. But the label has expanded its horizons recently with a new series of deluxe 2-CD artist anthologies combining hits, rarities, remixes and key album tracks into one package. Three such titles are available now from the label, dedicated to the sensational Loleatta Holloway, “Shame” diva Evelyn “Champagne” King and the band Skyy.

Though Chicago-born Loleatta Holloway (1946-2011) only released four albums on Salsoul Records’ Gold Mind imprint between 1976 and 1980, the gospel-trained singer with the powerful, passionate voice made her mark by putting the soul in Salsoul. During her tenure at the label, Holloway not only headlined her own albums – with productions from R&B legends Norman Harris (also Gold Mind’s chief) and Bobby Womack as well as her husband Floyd Smith – but her voice graced tracks by The Salsoul Orchestra (the galvanic “Run Away” and “Seconds”) and Bunny Sigler (the romantic “Only You”). Dreamin’: The Loleatta Holloway Anthology (1976-1982) begins with Holloway’s arrival at Salsoul following a brief but pivotal tenure at Atlanta’s Aware Records where she charted with the single “Cry to Me.” Salsoul transitioned Holloway into the disco market, but with Harris primarily at the helm, she never lost sight of her deep soul roots.

The chronologically-assembled Dreamin’ selects highlights from Holloway’s four Gold Mind releases (all of which are available in expanded editions from BBR). From label debut Loleatta, you’ll hear six songs including the defiant roar of Allan Felder, Ron Tyson and Norman Harris’ R&B and Disco chart single “Hit and Run,” arranged and produced by Harris in pull-out-all-the-stops mode. “Dreamin’,” which gives this compilation its title, afforded Holloway spoken monologues to which she committed the same level of fervor as she did singing. T.G. Conway arranged the sassy Philly soul update of a girl group record – with prominent backup vocals – with Holloway confronting another woman with eyes for her man. “Dreamin’” should have gotten Loleatta to the top of the pops, but alas, the track only hit No. 72 on the U.S. Pop chart. Before completing her second LP Queen of the Night, Loleatta joined The Salsoul Orchestra’s leader Vince Montana Jr. for “Run Away,” an effervescent opus that reached No. 3 on the Disco chart with an impossibly catchy hook and a deliciously elaborate production.

Five songs have been reprised from Queen of the Night including the sensual Bunny Sigler duet “Only You” and Walter Gibbons’ 12-inch mix of “Catch Me on the Rebound” showcasing Holloway’s forceful vocal style, and co-writer/producer Harris’ array of liquid guitar licks, swelling strings, funky bass, nonstop percussion and punchy horns.  1979’s self-titled album yields another four cuts here including a funky reworking of Burt Bacharach, Mack David and Luther Dixon’s “Baby It’s You” as a duet with its producer Bobby Womack, and Floyd Smith’s production of the anthem “The Greatest Performance of My Life.” Loleatta’s final Gold Mind platter, 1980’s Love Sensation, earned Holloway a Disco No. 1 with its Dan Hartman-helmed title song, one of four songs from the LP heard here.

Hartman figures prominently on Dreamin’. Not only is “Love Sensation” here in Tom Moulton’s mix, but this is the very first Holloway compendium ever to include “Vertigo/Relight My Fire,” Hartman’s sizzling smash featuring Holloway which also reached No. 1 on the Disco chart in 1979. Other highlights include “Seconds,” a reunion with The Salsoul Orchestra from their 1982 Patrick Adams-produced collection Heat It Up, and Walter Gibbons’ 12-inch remix of “Hit and Run.” Wayne A. Dickson and Malcolm McKenzie have produced this beautiful set (housed in a Super Jewel Box) which features remastering by Nick Robbins, a fine, concise essay by Christian John Wikane and an appreciation from such luminaries as Tom Moulton, Bobby Eli, Bob Esty, Bunny Sigler, Patrick Adams and the late Bobby Womack. Loleatta Holloway might not have reached the pop stardom of her contemporaries – Eli opines in his note that she “should have been just as big or even bigger than Aretha Franklin” – but her scorching brand of soulful disco hasn’t aged a day.

After the jump: the full track listing and order links for Dreamin’, plus the scoop on the releases from Skyy and Evelyn “Champagne” King!